Worship service 10/2/2016Welcome to World Communion Sunday, when we also make our yearly offering for Neighbors in Need, the United Church of Christ collection that specifically supports ministries of justice and compassion throughout the United States.

Jesus does a remarkable thing in this story. This is the only passage in the whole New Testament that gives a detailed description of the final judgment. And Jesus says that the deciding factor isn’t what you believe, or whether or not you are even Christian, but how you treat the ‘least’ of our brothers and sisters.This is a good day to celebrate World Communion Sunday, because according to the Gospel, we are in Communion with the whole world. We are all together in this. I saw a beautiful video on Facebook of organizations across the United States singing a prayer, a blessing for the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hoshana, which starts tonight. I have been working for churches for 34 years, and have always used an ecumenical church calendar that includes other faith’s holy days, but if I hadn’t seen this on Facebook, I wouldn’t have noticed it. The seminary started a Center for Peace and Justice last year, and they are proud of their involvement with people of all faiths. I received an invitation to an evening presentation, which was a joint event between Christians, Muslims, and Jews. A few days later, I received a letter of apology. The Christian organizers had accidentally scheduled it for the Jewish High Holy Day of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, the most holy of all holidays. Why don’t we pay attention to holidays of other faiths? These are our neighbors, and our friends. Why don’t we know Jewish and Muslim holidays? We are becoming a more inclusive world, and that’s a very good thing.Jesus is very inclusive, to put it mildly. “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats…”And then when the king says, “Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you…,” they don’t inherit it because they are Christian, or because they went to church on Sunday, or said their prayers. Jesus said,“When I was hungry, you gave me food, and when I was thirsty you gave me something to drink, when I was a stranger you welcomed me, when I was naked you gave me clothing, when I was sick you took care of me, and when I was in prison, you visited me.”Pretty simple. No test of belief, or knowledge, or getting the right answers. No separation of Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists and non-believers. It is only how we take care of each other.Around 1984 and 1985, there was a terrible famine in Ethiopia. We saw terrible, awful pictures on the news, of mothers with arms like sticks, and children with bellies bloated from starvation. They were hard to look at, and the Red Cross, Unicef, Save the Children, Catholic Charities, Lutheran Social Services, the UCC and all kinds of organizations mobilized to try to help these people. But as awful as it was, in 1990 after Carol and I got our little black daughter, suddenly, the pictures looked a lot worse. Suddenly they looked like MY child, and I couldn’t look at them without picturing My daughter sitting under a tree in the hot sun dying.That’s what Jesus is saying here. “Whatever you do, (or don’t do) to the least of these, that is what you’re doing to me.” Put My picture here. Put the face of Your child here. That’s who this is. The person you love most in the world. And that’s how much God cares for the world. Put the face of the person you love the most, here. And each person is the person God loves the most.Jesus didn’t see the destruction of whole cities in Syria, or the terrible poverty in Haiti when he said, “When I was hungry, you gave me food, and when I was thirsty you gave me something to drink.” When he said, “When I was a stranger you welcomed me, and when I was naked you gave me clothing,” he didn’t know about thousands of refugee families with children trying to get to a place of safety, and he didn’t live in a city where one out of every 26 school children didn’t have stable housing. When he said, ‘When I was sick you took care of me,” he wasn’t trying to pay for health insurance, or medical bills that he couldn’t afford, and when he said ‘When I was in prison, you visited me,” they didn’t have a huge percentage of black men incarcerated in the United States, and entire immigrant families living in detention centers for illegal immigrants.Jesus never saw the internet, or had the instant connections that we have, with our brothers and sisters around the world. But he knew what was most important.So, how do we live that out, in 2016, when we are aware of hundreds, thousands of people who desperately need help, not even counting those who approach us on the corners asking for money, or the phone calls and mail from charities asking for donations? If we really thought each one of them was Jesus, or our child, we couldn’t handle it. We don’t have the psychic capacity for that.But we get the point. Each of these is Someone’s child. Each of these is worthy of the best care possible, and we can’t pretend that they don’t count as much as my child. As much as Jesus.So, we do the best we can. We have to make hard decisions, and we need to keep making them. Do I give to the person on the street corner? Do I spend time, (and time is very important), helping over here, or is it better spent doing something else? Do I give to this charity, or give more money to another one? What about other people dependent upon me, when do I give time or money to my own family, and how much do I spend on my own pleasure, to keep myself healthy in body, mind and spirit, and how much do I give to others? What is the best use of my time, my money? Jesus doesn’t expect 100% right answers 100% of the time, and I don’t think there even Are right answers. That’s another interesting thing about the sheep and goat story. They were both surprised by the king’s criteria. They both asked, “When did we do this? When did we see you?” They weren’t out there making decisions with a great amount of thought behind it. They had just done what came naturally to them. They both just acted out of who they were.That’s part of the story, too. I’m not sure Jesus is telling us to shape up and act right. We already Know these people are our brothers and sisters, we know they are Jesus. Enormous systems: the justice system, health care, immigrant policies, and governments of nations, need help. But because you are who you are, you are on the right path. You are already making the right choices.